For Harris, the assaults centered on her time as lawyer basic of California.

For Biden, rivals zeroed in on his function passing tough-on-crime laws as a senator from Delaware within the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

“Sir, you are attempting to shift the view from what you created,” Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.), one in all three black candidates, instructed Biden at one level. “There are individuals proper now in jail for all times for drug offenses since you stood up and used that tough-on-crime phony rhetoric that acquired lots of people elected however destroyed communities like mine. This isn’t in regards to the previous, sir. That is in regards to the current, proper now.”

The trade was one in all a number of charged moments on race and felony justice, which stay pivotal points within the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

“It continues to be a historic election in relation to felony justice reform,” mentioned Udi Ofer, deputy nationwide political director and director of the Marketing campaign for Sensible Justice on the American Civil Liberties Union. “Twenty years in the past, Democrats have been making an attempt to outcompete one another on who could possibly be more durable on crime. In the present day, they’re making an attempt to outcompete one another on who may be smarter on justice.”

Who talked essentially the most throughout the second Democratic debate

Biden and Harris weren’t the one candidates who confronted criticism. Biden went after Booker’s time overseeing police as mayor of Newark, and New York Mayor Invoice de Blasio was accused of mishandling the case of Eric Garner, a black man killed throughout an encounter with metropolis cops in 2014.

Booker was the primary to criticize Biden on Wednesday night time, echoing his earlier assaults on Biden’s felony justice overhaul plan, launched final week. That proposal would undo nearly all of the tough-on-crime insurance policies Biden helped enact as a senator, corresponding to obligatory minimal penalties and a sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine.

It could additionally eradicate the loss of life penalty, which was expanded by a number of legal guidelines that Biden helped to go.

On the controversy stage, Biden defended the laws he wrote as reflecting a political consensus round tough-on-crime insurance policies in earlier many years. Two of Biden’s most vital payments — the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act and the 1994 Violent Crime Management and Legislation Enforcement Act — handed with assist from most black lawmakers.

However Biden additionally pitched himself as a candidate who would pursue adjustments as president, highlighting his proposal to eradicate the remaining crack-powder sentencing disparity.

“I believe that we should always change the way in which we take a look at prisons,” Biden mentioned. “Proper now, we’re in a state of affairs the place, when somebody is convicted of a drug crime, they find yourself going to jail, into jail. They need to be going to rehabilitation.”

Biden accused Booker of failing to rein within the Newark police division when he was mayor from 2006 to 2013. The police drive was investigated by the U.S. Justice Division in 2011 and subsequently got here underneath federal oversight.

“Nothing occurred your entire time you have been mayor,” Biden mentioned. “There was nothing executed to cope with the police division that was corrupt.”

Booker mentioned he applied adjustments that have been endorsed by civil liberties advocates, then pivoted again to Biden, saying that “all the issues that he’s speaking about . . . he created.”

“That is a kind of cases the place the home was set on fireplace, and also you claimed duty for these legal guidelines,” Booker mentioned. “And you may’t simply now give you a plan to place out that fireplace.”

Biden additionally went on the offensive in opposition to Harris, accusing her of failing to deliver circumstances in opposition to college districts in Los Angeles and San Francisco, which he described as “two of essentially the most segregated college districts within the nation.”

Harris, who’s black, defended her document and portrayed herself as a pacesetter who applied adjustments whereas going through tough selections, corresponding to whether or not to pursue the loss of life penalty in sure circumstances.

“I dare anyone who is able to make that call to face the individuals I’ve confronted to say, ‘I can’t search the loss of life penalty.’ That’s my background. That’s my work. I’m pleased with it,” Harris mentioned. “I believe you may choose individuals by when they’re underneath fireplace. It’s not about some fancy opinion on a stage. However once they’re within the place to truly decide, what do they do?”

Oversight of police departments arose as one other theme.

Julián Castro, a former secretary of housing and concrete improvement, referred to as for a nationwide use-of-force customary for police and described himself because the “solely candidate that has put ahead a police reform plan.”

And early within the night, a number of protesters focused de Blasio with cries of “fireplace Pantaleo,” a reference to Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer accused of killing Garner with an unlawful chokehold.

De Blasio mentioned Garner’s household was “going to get justice” quickly in New York Metropolis, referring to a coming determination from NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill about whether or not Pantaleo ought to maintain his job.